Sympho-batics

LITTLE ROCK — Cirque de la Symphonie 8 p.m. today and Saturday, Robinson Center Music Hall, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock. Six cirque artists join the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson for the opening concert of the orchestra's Acxiom Pops Live! series.

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Those who attend the Arkansas Symphony's Acxiom Pops Live! series can expect to hear Broadway singers, jazz musicians or even Santa Claus soloing with the orchestra.

But concertgoers will get a real eye-opener for the 2008-09 season opener tonight and Saturday at Little Rock's Robinson Center Music Hall as an aerialist flies over their heads, two strongmen do balancing acts, a mime does amazing juggling feats and a dancer-contortionist twists herself into unimaginable shapes.

The six cirque artists, veterans of Cirque du Soleil and other cirque programs from throughout the world, are joining the orchestra and new Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson for "Cirque de la Symphonie," designed to bring the "magic of cirque" to the music hall.

The performers: Russian aerial artist Alexander Streltsov; "Duo Design," hand-balancing strongmen Jaroslaw Marciniak and Dariusz Wronski, aka Jarek and Darek, from Warsaw, Poland; Russian mime-juggler Vladimir Tsarkov; Canadian aerialist Aloysia Gavre; and Russian contortionist/ dancer Elena Tsarkova, aka the "Lady in White."

Athens, Ga.-based Cirque de la Symphonie has been around for about a decade, says Bill Allen, its founder and director.

"I've been involved in the entertainment business quite some time," he says. "Back in the late '90s I became involved in working with Russian artists; I guess I made 38 trips to Russia over the last 15 years. I got to be very good friends with the administration of the Moscow Circus and many different circus organizations around the former Soviet Union.

"It was kind of an interesting time; there was an increasing interest in cirque artists, rather than just the 'circ-us.' Of course, there's nothing at all wrong with the regular three-ring circus and it's still very popular.

"My idea was to take the art form to a different level. That's been done in other ways from the Canadian perspective up in Montreal [Cirque du Soleil].

"But nobody had ever matched the cirque art form with symphony music before, as a true fusion of the two arts."

Allen says the idea is to present a true collaborative art form.

"We wanted to present a program that wasn't a distraction to the symphony, but that enhanced the whole experience," he explains.

He started putting cirque artists together with symphony programs in the '90s with the Cincinnati Pops and conductor Erich Kunzel, whom Allen describes as "one of those pioneers always willing to experiment with various new elements for a pops program."

Gradually, he started adding performers - "we brought in a strongman act from Vegas, webrought in contortionists, we brought in jugglers.

The more we did, the more people just absolutely loved it."

Allen says the cirque programs attract people who wouldn't normally come to orchestra performances.

"One of our goals was to bring a new wave of fresh faces to the symphony hall, and I think we've achieved that," he says. "There are a lot of young professionals, people in their 20s, college students.

"We were out in Seattle in July, and they had a contest at one of the biggest rock 'n' roll stationsand they got free tickets and did a meet-and-greet with the people from our show. And the radio DJ told us it was the most successful contest they had ever run and that their phones were constantly jammed."

The musical programs are mostly classical, "but it's fun to hear a few John Williams [movie] pieces and contemporary pieces as well. Usually it's a mixture," Allen says.

"This is a great program of music," Robson adds. "This particular program is more in the light classics area ... a number of popular Russian short show pieces for orchestra.

"We'll also be featuring the orchestra in a [Gioacchino] Rossini overture - the Overture to La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) as well as the Overture to [Jules Massenet's] Orpheus in the Underworld."

The juggler will perform his routine to the "Sabre Dance" from Aram Khatchaturian's ballet Gayane, a piece that has been associated with juggling at least since The Ed Sullivan Show (it was the music that accompanied the spinning plates act).

"I think that's how we first arrived at it," Allen says. "When we first started touring with a whole program ... and we really wanted to have a repertoire available, a conductor who became sort of a mentor suggested 'Sabre Dance' to me and it worked pretty well.

"Since then we've expanded our repertoire, but our juggler loves the music so much he doesn't want to give it up."

The program will also include the "Lesghinka" dance from Gayane as well as the waltz from Khatchaturian's Masquerade.

Gavre will do an aerial hoop act while the orchestra plays the "Bacchanale" fromthe opera Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saens. "It's just spectacular to see her go into this final spin up above the stage while the music is building to a crescendo," Allen says.

"With the aerial artist that's going to fly out over the heads of the audience, the music director and conductor wanted to insert the [Peter] Tchaikovsky piece, the 'Waltz' from Sleeping Beauty, and that will be the first time we'll have an aerialist perform to that music."

For the finale, featuring J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d minor, "Jarek and Darek, our strongmen, do a spellbinding nine-minute act - if you can imagine the sight of one guy balancing on the head of the other guy, upside down, doing a hand balance on his head as he stands up, slow-motion, sort of statue act."

Orchestral interludes will include Bela Bartok's Roumanian Folk Dances; the "Danse Profane" from Claude Debussy's Danses Sacree et Profane; and Antonin Dvorak's eighth Slavonic Dance, op.46 No. 8, Robson says.

"This is always a collaboration," Allen explains. "We always provide the rights to the orchestra to have the final say on the program. Even though we have a repertoire, some of the music [involves] rentals, some they already have in their library and it just makes sense to make use of what you have.

"And different orchestras have priorities and capabilities and nobody knows better than the music director what best suits the orchestra's capabilities.

"That's where a lot of the energy comes from. Not only is this the pinnacle for a cirque performer, to be able to perform in front of a live audience of thousands of people with a full orchestra behind them, but the orchestra has a lot of fun too. They just seem to play a lot harder."

Allen says he didn't set out to create something that was bigger than the sum of its parts. It just happened that way.

"I wish I could say I was the genius who knew all this would take place," he says, "but the truth is, it's like somebody had an idea to mix peanut butter with jelly, and it's better than either one alone."